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This year, I have a research fellowship at my university researching New and Emerging Media. I’ve thus been working on a number of different projects related to computational ways of looking at language and discourse (for example, this one). However,…

What is race? What does it mean to be White, Black, Asian, Latina/o, or any other identifiable race? Most of us probably think of it as something marked on our bodies. It’s the pigment of our skin, the shape of…

In my previous post, I presented my approach to balancing two competing needs: (1) preparing students who speak ‘nonstandard’ English to succeed as academic writers and (2) creating an environment that promotes respect for linguistic diversity among my students while…

The online magazine Splice Today is running an article I wrote titled “Should the U.S. Make English The Official Language?” Here’s a preview: Debates over immigration policy quickly devolve into arguments over the degree to which immigrants’ presence within our society is…

Higher education in the United States has been struggling to deal with issues of linguistic diversity for many years. On the one hand, the majority of US citizens are English speakers, and most of this majority are monolingual (having forgotten…

Privilege. It’s a controversial word, one many of us don’t like to talk about. Some people associate it with guilt or with being accused of being racist, sexist, or homophobic. Many people have become tired of hearing all of the…

What causes violent crime? It’s an important question, and one that is at the heart of criminology. A large number of factors have been suggested as possible causes and found to correlate with criminal activity (check out this book for…